1. Photographer Sergei Mikhailovich Prokudin-Gorskii
(1863-1944) undertook a photographic survey of the
Russian Empire with the support of Tsar Nicholas II. He
used a specialized camera to capture three black and
white images in fairly quick succession and then using
red, green and blue filters recombined the images to
produce color photos that were ahead of there time. The
high quality of Gorskii’s pics make it difficult for viewers
to believe that they are looking 100 years back in time
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2. The Russian Empire was a state that existed from
1721 until the Russian Revolution in 1917. It was
the second largest contiguous empire in world
history, surpassed only by the Mongol Empire, the
third largest empire the British Empire. At one
point in 1866, it stretched from eastern Europe,
across Asia, and into North America. By the end of
the 19th century the size of the empire was about
(8,600,000 sq mi) or almost 1/6 of the Earth's
landmass.